A painting by British pop icon David Bowie was recently discovered at a Canadian store that resells donated goods. The David Bowie painting currently has frantic bidders lining up for a chance to own it.
The Ziggy Stardust rocker painted the computer and acrylic collage on canvas by himself. It is part of the so-called D Head series of portraits that he painted between 1995 and 1997. It is signed on the back with his initials.
Opening bids of more than $14,000 (₦5,760,000) blew past Toronto auction house Cowley Abbot’s estimated valuation of the diminutive artwork. The online auction closes on June 24.
Speaking to AFP, auctioneer Rob Cowley said: “We were very excited to discover that the artwork was original and authentic. We are fans of David Bowie’s work. And it is very exciting to bring an artwork by him to the market.”
The 24 by 20-centimeter painting features a pale figure dressed in teal clothes with teal and red hair on a crimson background. The painting was originally sold through a website around 2001. Two decades later, it somehow found itself at a donations store in South River, Ontario. There, an anonymous buyer paid Can$5 for it.
David Bowie and art
Bowie attended art school and was an avid collector. His estate fetched tens of millions of dollars after his death in January 2016 for some 350 works from his collection.
His collection includes works by Basquiat, Henry Moore, and Damien Hirst. But his own artworks, according to Cowley, rarely go on sale.
Starting with Space Oddity in 1969, Bowie scored hit after hit over more than four decades. They ranged from The Jean Genie and Heroes in the 1970s to Let’s Dance and Modern Love in the 1980s to more recent hits like 2013’s wistful Where Are We Now?
Many of these hits became era-defining hits around the world while successively defining what it meant to be a music legend. Two days after the release of his 25th studio album, Blackstar, on his 69th birthday, Bowie died of cancer.
